Message from the Editors

We are pleased to bring you the fifth edition of CUA Libraries Online, which, this fall, continues our regular features, updates you on recent developments in the Catholic University of America Libraries and introduces our new director, Michael McLane. As always, we welcome comments, questions and suggestions; please direct them via our contact form.

Welcome, Michael McLane

Michael McLane was not actively searching for a new job when he learned earlier this year of the opening for the director's position at the Catholic University of America Libraries. But McLane, then serving as executive director of the Central New York Library Resources Council in Syracuse, N.Y., was intrigued by the position. The father of two CUA alumni, McLane held the university in high regard. Plus, as a long-time academic librarian, he welcomed the prospect of returning to a university setting. In August, the university welcomed him to campus as the successor to Adele Chwalek, who retired in January after 18 years at the helm of the campus libraries.

McLane's path to librarianship was as fortuitous as his path to the director's position at Catholic. As a graduate student in political science at Syracuse University, McLane took a job at the university library, fell in love with the work, and decided to pursue a master's degree in library science rather than one in political science. In addition to a bachelor's degree from Le Moyne College and the master's in library science from Syracuse, he holds a master's degree in higher education administration, also from Syracuse.

Most of the nearly 40 years McLane has worked as a librarian have been spent in university settings, including stints as dean of libraries and instructional resources at Salisbury State University in Maryland, director of libraries and learning resources at the State University of New York at Oswego and associate librarian and coordinator of reference and instruction at SUNY Oswego. For the past five years, however, as the head of the Central New York Library Resources Council, a libraries consortium, McLane was in an office setting rather than a library setting. He describes himself as excited to return to an academic setting, particularly a Catholic institution with a strong sense of community.

McLane also offers words of praise for what he describes as a strong, dedicated staff at CUA Libraries. He aims to raise the profile of the library system and its staff to increase awareness of the many services the CUA Libraries offer. The message he sends to the university community is simple: The libraries are here to support the academic community, and communication with the libraries - and the director, too - is encouraged.

Goodbye and Good Luck, Deborah Ozga

Deborah Ozga, Assistant Director for Public Services, has accepted a position at the National Institutes of Health Library. Debbie has led the University Libraries in many capacities, most recently as Acting Director of Libraries from January - August 2005. Debbie is an excellent model for staff -- dedicated, hard working, and fair. The National Institutes of Health is getting a jewel; we hope they appreciate her as much as we have!

The History Channel on Location at the Semitics/ICOR Library

The History Channel's archaeological program "Digging for the Truth" visited the Catholic University of America in October for an upcoming show on the Queen of Sheba.

Professor Douglas Gropp of the Semitics department was interviewed by the show's host, Josh Bernstein. Filming took place in the Semitics/ Institute of Christian Oriental Research (ICOR) Library on the Garden Level of Mullen Library. The show is expected to appear on television in late March 2006.

Search for Articles with Google Scholar

The CUA library catalog and many of the article databases CUA subscribes to are now accessible through Google Scholar.

If you are located on campus visit http://scholar.google.com and begin searching. If you are off campus you will need to set the preferences so that Google will show you the resources that CUA provides. Please go to http://scholar.google.com, beside the search box, click Scholar Preferences. Enter CUA in the text field next to Library Links then click on the Find Library button. Check the box in the front of our university name, then click Save Preferences in the lower right corner.

Within Google Scholar you may conduct searches by keyword, author and article title. There is also an advanced search with more options. In the result list, when you see Full-Text@CUA, that means we have access to the electronic copy for the article. Click on Full-Text@CUA , then click on the word Go under a database that is listed as having the full text. If the article is not available electronically or the result is a book you will see Resources@CUA. Click on Resources@CUA, then click on the word Go next to ALADIN Catalog (WRLC). This will search the catalog to see if the item is located at CUA or another WRLC school.

Google Scholar is good for conducting simple searches across a broad number of databases. For complex or in depth searching we recommend that you search individual databases through ALADIN. Also keep in mind that while many databases are represented on Google Scholar, those who do not participate in the SFX link resolver are not.

The Library and Information Science Collection Has Moved

During the summer months, the Library and Information Science Library (LISL) collection moved from Marist Hall to its new home in Mullen Library. LISL is now closed, and most LISL items selected for the circulating collection in Mullen are now shelved by call number in the Stacks. Catalog locations for the items are updated as they are transferred. Former LISL items are not identified as such in the catalog or on the spine labels.

Current library and information science periodicals are shelved in the Main Reading Room, and bound periodicals are shelved in the Periodical Stacks. Check the catalog for holdings.

Checking in with... Fast Track Project

Amalaraj Savari
Library Management Systems Librarian

Tim Brown
Technical Services Technician

Nirmal Gomes
Technical Services Technician

Most CUA Libraries' departments' names are straightforward in describing their purposes: Reference and Instructional Services, Cataloging, Acquisitions. The name of the Fast Track Project offers a hint of its purpose but does not tell the entire story.

Fast Track Project began in 1998 to speed up the process of getting new books out of the libraries' acquisitions and cataloging departments and into the hands of patrons. Approximately 90 percent of the CUA Libraries' books are processed by the Fast Track Project, according to Raj Savari, the Library Management Systems Librarian. During the last school year, that amounted to 9,498 items going through Fast Track on their way to library shelves, he added.

Just how fast is the turnaround for newly acquired books? The goal, Savari said, is to process the books within 24 hours after a decision is made to add them to the CUA Libraries' collection. Meeting this goal requires that Savari and his team of three library paraprofessionals work closely with other library departments and effectively utilize the latest in technology. In fact, thanks to advances in technology, the Fast Track Project is aiming to make the journey of new books to library shelves even faster.

Library Staff Achievements

This semester, CUA Libraries is celebrating the professional achievements of librarians Kristina Womack and Mary Agnes Thompson.

Kristina Womack, Science/Nursing/Technology Librarian, won a travel scholarship to the XXIV Charleston Conference: "Issues in Book and Serial Acquisition". The $1,200 scholarship is sponsored by American Chemical Society Publications (ACS).

The scholarship is awarded annually to a librarian who is a first-time attendee of the conference. The winner is selected based on the submission of an essay about "Why attending the Charleston Conference would be most valuable to me in my professional growth" and a curriculum vitae.

The event took place in Charleston, S.C., from Nov. 2 to Nov. 5. "The Charleston Conference is an informal annual gathering of librarians, publishers, electronic resource managers, consultants, and vendors of library materials [...] to discuss issues of importance to them all." [http://www.katina.info/conference/General%20Information.htm?pageId=1]

This year's conference sessions included topics such as "Balancing the demands of print and electronic resources", "Google chugs into Libraryville", "Issues in health sciences collection development", "Is purchase-on-demand a worthy model?", "Effects of open access publishing on journal publishing", "Managing institutional repositories", "Cooperative monographic collection development" and many more [see http://www.katina.info/conference/AtAGlance.doc].

Mary Agnes Thompson, reference librarian for collection services, learned this semester that an article she co-authored was included in the most recent volume of The Journal of Baccalaureate Social Work. "The Scholarship Crash on the Internet Highway: Implications for Faculty-Librarian Collaboration," was written with Elizabeth M. Plionis, who retired in May as Associate Professor and Assistant Dean in the National Catholic School of Social Service at CUA, and Catherine Eisenhower, a former CUA Libraries Graduate Library Pre-professional now at George Washington University's Gelman Library.

The article covers a two-year period during which the principal authors, Plionis and Thompson, collaborated to discover why undergraduate seniors were having difficulty locating required scholarly journal articles for their senior theses. The first part of the article discusses the genesis of the problem and the second part describes how the authors redesigned the course in light of these findings.

The article appears in The Journal of Baccalaureate Social Work, vol. 11, no. 1 (2005). This volume of the journal is currently shelved in the Main Reading Room at Mullen Library.

The Main Reading Room Reorganized

Following the renovation of Mullen Library, the library's reference collection moved from the building's Main Reading Room on the second floor to the first floor. The Main Reading Room collection was left divided into four areas of the room and out of call number order, making retrieval of books difficult for library users and library staff.

Last summer, members of the libraries' Reference and Instructional Services department and Library Facilities and Information Systems department spent several weeks reorganizing the room. The Main Reading Room collection is now arranged in continuous call number order, and call number tags have been affixed to shelves to ease identification and retrieval of items. In addition, the shelves and furniture in the room were rearranged to utilize the room's space.

Please stop by the Main Reading Room on the second floor of Mullen Library to see the improvements.

Book Notes

Printing and graphic technology have catapulted children's picture books into a unique art form. Companion to American Children's Picture Books by Connie Ann Kirk covers the history of children's picture books by focusing on picture books for young children and the more recent trend of picture books for older children and young adults.

The Companion contains approximately 400 entries of authors, illustrators, and titles. The entries are comprised of publication information, plot summaries, Library of Congress subject headings, and characters. Also included are appendices on topics such as award-winning books, linoleum cuts, pastels, and printing technology. The book also contains an extensive bibliography.

The Companion will be of interest to parents, librarians, faculty and students of library science and education or anyone who enjoys picture books.

Connie Ann Kirk is a scholar who specializes in American literature and culture, and children's literature.

First published 30 years ago, this unpretentious introduction to history research is a pleasure to read. Chapter 1 describes what historians do and the remaining chapters tell us how to be successful budding historians. Now in its 9th edition, this guide is remarkably up to date. While many study guides still cover the card catalog with only a passing nod to "the new technology", this guide embraces it. (The author predicts that very soon, most primary-source research will be conducted on the Web.)

Chapters include how to "read" non-print materials, how to find primary source documents on the web, and how to cite print and web sources to avoid plagiarism. Finally, there is an extensive appendix that lists and annotates the best history Web sites available.

No, the CUA libraries don't have Julia Child or Marcella Hazan. But search the online catalog with the keyword "cookery" and you'll find 95 items, ranging from Mesopotamian cooking through the cookery of imperial Rome and the Middle Ages, in Mullen Library, and quite a few volumes on special diets in the Nursing Library. Interest in food as culture is increasing.

The Reference Room has three fascinating new sets. The Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America is a two-volume exploration of American cultural icons like Betty Crocker and Colonel Sanders. More importantly, it features broad historical overviews of cooking in America from Native Americans to the present, as well as regional American traditions. The three-volume Encyclopedia of Food and Culture is consulted most often by anthropology students in search of information on topics like the origins and ancient history of beer and wine and food as a source of social and group identity. The two volumes of the Cambridge World History of Food cover similar territory in an even more scholarly fashion. It is extraordinarily well indexed and contains a list of all plant and animal species under both their common names and their scientific (Latin) names.